You will learn how to validate a project to make it much more attractive to investors.
Percentil is a company that, in pursuit of sustainability, gives garments a second life.
The textile industry is currently one of the most polluting in the world . Both in the manufacturing process , due to the use of toxins that end up in the water, and because tokelau email list of the waste that the clothing itself generates. In Africa, there are landfills that accumulate mountains of clothing that arrives from the first world, ending up in rivers, an environmental disaster. Fast fashion , which makes the population consume in an excessive and irresponsible way , is behind this problem.
On this occasion, Lourdes Ferrer , co-founder of Percentil , explains in detail how she has decided to counteract the effects of fast fashion through her business idea , how she obtained financing and what her medium-term objectives are.
It all started when her twin girls were born and she realised that most of the clothes they had were new or almost new. A lot of gifts are given and children grow quickly. The consequence of this is that families have a huge amount of children's clothing that is completely wasted.
This is how the idea of Percentil arose in 2012 , which has now become one of the leading portals in Europe for the sale of new and semi-new second-hand clothing.
They started out as three people focusing on children's fashion, and today they have 45 employees, selling all kinds of sustainable fashion items for any customer profile in Spain, Germany and France . In addition, their clothing selection system is very demanding, offering only clothing that is in perfect condition.
Project validation and first steps
The project began with his own personal convictions, as he had never liked to throw away things that were worth anything, “ it is important to take advantage of resources that still have life ,” he says.
They also bought a lot of second-hand clothes thanks to a friend who lived in the USA, a country much closer to the business model of buying used textile items, as it has been common for Americans for many years. However, in Spain in 2012 this culture did not exist, but there was a crisis that made people need to buy cheap.
How did you manage to raise the first funds and get started?
Percentil has raised funds in every possible way known . First, they carried out a click test , creating a website based on the company they already had, with the lean startup philosophy, first validating and verifying that the business model makes sense , and then investing time and money in it .
Start of marked textTWEET IT! Discover the sustainable fashion revolution with Percentil. Learn how they have transformed second-hand into a lifestyle in the Sage Advice Podcast.End of marked text
To do this, they ran Facebook campaigns to drive traffic to this temporary website, and measured the various indicators that resulted from the publication of photographs of 3,000 second-hand products.
They measured the clicks and then, to avoid the frustration of the clients (who could not actually buy anything), they told them that they were taking part in a market study and that for having participated in it, when they launched the project they would give them a special discount. In this way they collected a lot of data . They also carried out surveys, bought databases , and used users from the other company's website that they already had up and running, running the business with the first capital for a month.
They were ready to visit investors and present them not just with an idea, but with a business with the foundations already established , giving them a series of data to rely on. This allowed them as entrepreneurs to give investors reliable data.
